Kylie Minogue, X

It would be a horribly churlish person who chided Kylie Minogue for making a meal of her comeback. The woman has survived breast cancer: she's entitled to make a 14-course menu degustation out of her comeback that would shame Heston Blumenthal. There has been a film documentary, a TV special, a children's book, a New Year's Eve concert at Wembley, a perfume launch and an exhibition at the Victoria and Albert museum. Finally, there's a new album that, depending on your perspective, either looks like the piece de resistance or a bit of an afterthought.

Certainly, anyone expecting a collection of songs that draw upon her medical travails is going to be disappointed. Only No More Rain, with its cheery dynamics pinched from Madonna's Ray of Light, and lyrics about getting a second chance - and, rather sweetly, the sound of her fans' cheers - seems to touch on recent events. In fact, a lot of the songs don't appear to be about anything much. "Make me feel like I can make it real, you've got me hooked on the floor, if I'm a tease and you're the one to please I want more," runs one chorus, which frankly, is just shy of singing "blah blah blah, this is the chorus, blah blah blah".

Elsewhere, the lyricists lock their gaze on the boudoir. Usually, they confine themselves to dealing in cliches. Got me begging for more, be your fantasy, only ever dreamt of this, etc. Make you so damn hot, etc. Occasionally, however, they break out the double-entendres and it feels like the end of the world. Nu-Di-Ty offers an insight into what Futuresex/Lovesounds might have sounded like if Justin Timberlake had fired producer Timbaland and elected to replace him with Sid James. It's Carry On Bringing Sexy Back, punctuated with flatulent bursts of trombone, a kind of musical "phwoar!". She keeps referring to her amorata's penis as his "thing" - "Turn your thing on", "Pop that zipper down and work that thing out" - which is presumably intended to sound coy and sexy, but just makes you think of Adrian Mole getting his ruler out. She is also required to sing "Drop your socks and grab your mini boom-box," which, as invitations to sexual intercourse go, definitely needs work.

Then, as ever, there's the voice. Minogue's diffident, robotic delivery has long been noted. "How do you describe a feeling?" she wonders at one juncture, sounding as if she's genuinely never had one, like those alien women who used to stare blankly at William Shatner and ask, "What is this 'kissing', Captain Kirk?" Matters are hardly helped by sticking her voice through electronic effects that render it even more mechanical. Coupled with the lyrical fnarr-fnarring, the overall effect is as if a 13-year-old boy has somehow wrested control of Stephen Hawking's computer.

It's a bit disappointing to find Kylie nearing 40 and sounding more emotionally disconnected than ever. But you could reasonably argue that no one buys a Kylie Minogue album for its lyrical insight and searing emotional intensity, in the same way that no one goes to see Radiohead in the hope that Thom Yorke will come onstage wearing a pair of gold hotpants and sing The Loco-Motion. They're looking for glossy, cutting-edge pop, and for about half of its 45 minutes, X delivers. The single Two Hearts offers a winning glam, piano-driven stomp. Sensitised is a fantastic song, powered by a sample of Serge Gainsbourg's Bonnie and Clyde. So is Wow: it opens with a jangling piano that winks at the ersatz house music of her Stock, Aitken and Waterman singles.

There are thrilling, walloping synthesiser riffs composed under the influence of Daft Punk and jerky, 80s-influenced beats. But there's also a lot of stuff that sounds perfunctory, particularly in light of recent fat-free albums by Girls Aloud and Britney Spears. All I See is so vaporous, it's a wonder Minogue didn't forget she was singing it and just wander off halfway through. Certainly it causes the listener's mind to wander, chiefly to the fact that X's 13 tracks were apparently whittled down from a prospective 40. The thought of what the 27 songs deemed not as good as All I See and Nu-Di-Ty sounded like makes you feel a little faint.

In fact, X is business as usual for a Kylie Minogue album: a handful of great tracks surrounded by stuff that's so obviously filler you could inject it into cavity walls and save up to 33% on your energy bills. You might have hoped she'd bounce back with something more spectacular. Then again, given the events of the past two years, perhaps business as usual is precisely the message Kylie Minogue wants to send out.